[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
[October 7, 1994]
[Page 1714]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 1714]]


Remarks at the Blue Ribbon Schools Ceremony
October 7, 1994

    Thank you very much for that wonderful welcome, increasingly rare 
around here these days. I just wanted to hear the Vice President say 
those lines from ``A Man For All Seasons.'' [Laughter] They're 
wonderful, aren't they?
    Let me say, as you know, we're about to wind up this session of 
Congress today, tomorrow--sometime in our lifetime, it will end--and 
that's why I couldn't be here earlier today. But I did want to come by 
and say a heartfelt congratulations to all of you.
    The Vice President and the Secretary of Education have already 
talked about what we're trying to do here, but I would like to put in a 
couple of sentences what I think is very important. It's hardly ever 
discussed in the common discussion, at least, of what goes on in 
Washington. But we have been quietly, but effectively, trying to create 
a dramatic change in the relationship of the National Government to the 
schools of this country and to the teachers and to what is going on in 
education. It is a change rooted in the experiences that Secretary Riley 
and Deputy Secretary Kunin and I had as Governors and the hours and 
hours and hours that we all spent in public schools, listening to 
teachers, watching people work in the schools, listening to parents.
    We have made the Federal Government both more active in education 
and, yet, less meddlesome in trying to support what you are trying to 
do. We have tried to put the National Government on record in favor of 
globally competitive national standards of excellence in education but 
also in favor of getting out of the way and letting you achieve those 
standards of excellence in education. And this is a substantial 
departure. The elementary and secondary education act that just passed 
the Congress, overcoming the perennial filibuster problem, does just 
that. It provides targeted funding, more directed toward the areas of 
real need, but also provides for an enormous amount of flexibility for 
the schools so that every school can be a blue ribbon school. That, in 
the end, ought to be our objective in America.
    So we will keep trying to do our job here. It will make a real 
difference that no child should ever walk away from going to college 
because of the cost, because under this new student loan program, you 
can have lower interest rates and longer repayment terms, and it can be 
geared to your salary so that if you want to be a schoolteacher or a 
police officer, something where you're not going to be rich, you can 
still afford to pay back that student loan. That will make a difference. 
It will make a difference in hundreds of thousands of more kids in Head 
Start; that by 1996, every child in this country under the age of 2 will 
be immunized; that'll make it easier for the kindergarten and the first 
grade teachers to do their job. Those things will make a difference.
    But in the end, we know what will make the difference is you, the 
teachers, the parents, the principals, the people at the grassroots 
level. All the magic of education is still in the human interplay that 
is a long way from Washington, DC. So we'll keep trying to do our job, 
but a big part of our job is making sure that you have, to use the new 
Washington buzzword, the empowerment necessary to do your job. That is 
our commitment to you; we will keep it. And I am glad to see your 
smiling faces here today.
    Bless you all, and thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 12:15 p.m. on the South Lawn at the White 
House.